Yukos for sale - foreigners need not apply

The bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos, whose former owner is in a Siberian prison, is to be sold off next month in the first in a series of bargain basement auctions. Russian bankruptcy officials confirmed yesterday that the first batch of Yukos assets will be sold at the end of March, with further sales later. Although the auction is open to all bidders, Russia's state-dominated companies Rosneft and Gazprom are widely expected to swallow up the shares.

The sale follows the humiliating bankruptcy of Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil company, last summer - and the politically motivated campaign against its former chief executive Mikhail Khordorkovsky, serving eight years in prison on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

Officials estimated Yukos's remaining assets at $22bn . They include several lucrative oil refineries. According to Russian business daily Vedomosti, the first of the assets to be sold would be Yukos's billion-dollar stakes in the state-controlled oil companies Gazprom Neft and Rosneft, where it holds 20% and 9.44%.

Analysts said that although foreign companies could in theory bid, the Kremlin was likely to take a dim view of outside offers. Artyom Konchin, an oil and gas analyst at the Aton brokerage in Moscow, told the Guardian: "It sounds like an open auction, but ... the common theory is that Rosneft and Gazprom will both buy up the stakes in their own companies."